Twenty Something

Yeah it was a proper chore doing a search for crashy crashy with your username. So, I’m still waiting for you to tell me what you’re tagging me for? What is it you think you’ve ’won?’

What point is it you think you are making today? Is it another attempt to insinuate that I have said house prices can only ever go up? If so, please point me to the post I've made stating that. Oh. you can't. I tell you what I can point you towards though. 2017 - The crash is on like Donkey Kong. 2018 - Brexit will innevitably cause a crash 2019 - UK crashing just like the USA 2020 - The crash really is impending now 2021 - Crashy crashy time You've posted the phrase 'crashy crashy' 83 times since joining in 2016. How many times have you been correct? Maybe this is your big moment hey? See, I told you in 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 that prices would fall. How much of a 'crashy crashy' do you need to make your poor financial judgement over most of the last decade go away?

You must be limbering up to jump in then given you just wanted a 5% drop before you brought something?

So given I’m on a five year fix, what do you reckon will happen as rents increase xyz percent over the coming years and my mortgage payment remains exactly the same? Renting the equivalent house on my street would cost me about £300 a month more than my mortgage today. That gap is going to grow. How is renting cheaper than owning?

Ok. To play along if I was renting *now* then how would I be better off given the last few years of equity gains? Best not to have owned an asset over the last few years that has appreciated between 15 - 25% as I might now be ‘losing’ a few grand a month? How much of a crash do you personally need to make it all better?

Absolutely. At somepoint in the future all being well (and I’m an optimist so I assume it will) I’ll have zero costs associated with housing other than a bit of upkeep and the usual council tax, utilities etc. Assuming you can do either, buy vs rent will always be a personal choice, and that’s fine. I think fundamentally however everyone would rather own the place they call home. An Englishman’s home is his castle and all that. Even if a crash does happen the ‘value’ that I place on owning a home won’t move an inch.

And it’s gained a near six figure sum in a few years so you can extrapolate from that how bothered myself and countless others like me are.

Well you asked me a question so I replied. Someone replying to you on a forum seems like quite the eye opener to you! And then off we go again down the pointless why are you even here rabbit hole. As per our back and forth a number of years ago, you really are just too permanently upset by everything to be living the millionaire lifestyle you profess to have. See ya.

Willingness to enter into another race to the bottom argument with yourself = 0.

Couldn’t agree more in terms of a house being of far more worth than the sum of money invested. I’ve posted many times about my reasons for buying being related to many of the things you cite and other than can I afford the monthly payments, nothing to do with money. However, here we are on a site that is obsessed with the value of property and therefore the financial falls that have long been predicted. Posts therefore invariably turn towards the latest prediction of monetary losses, and round we go. Neither side of the argument knows where the future is heading however certain they are. It is therefore of interest to me to understand how people with opposing views come up with their figures. In this case, my argument is that I’ve not lost any money, and it’s all by the by anyway as until I sell it no gains or losses have been made anyway.

You quite literally above said I’m losing £132 a day, and then said after my reply that I’m losing more than that then.

Be interested to see the maths on that one. Year on year growth has slowed, ergo my property is still worth more on paper than it was a year ago and it sure as heck is still worth more than the back end of 2019 when our offer was accepted. How have I lost money?

Oh ok. And considering the price when I brought in early 2020, which based on a recent sale and the rics survey for my remortgage in April is nearly a six figure increase in value?

Matches with what I’ve written many times before. The data I found was that the median LTV is a fraction over 70%, and only 4% of the market is on a 90% or worse LTV. Most households, the vast majority indeed, have a significant buffer to weather any drops in equity. That doesn’t sell papers or get this lot excited of course, so expect plenty of continued click bait about the cost of living crisis and all the houses in the country being repossessed, complete of course with pictures of young mums outside new build estates in <insert city>. HPI has to slow down now I feel, but like you, I just don’t see any significant crash / end of world scenario. I’ll leave you to the inevitable abuse and attempts at oneupmanship that will no doubt follow from the faithful here.

I thought based on recent posts that the world was unfair and why should people be able to deprive others through having miltiple properties when others can afford none? Yet here you are…

So you plan to end up with a flat and a house in the future then? If you’ll need to sell your flat to then buy a house you’re not really chain free. If you’re that adamant that prices are going to go belly up why wouldn’t you rent, put all your money in savings and then really be in a position to cash in if your prediction is correct? Or are you planning on becoming a BTL’er with the flat?

How so? How much is my house losing each day?

No idea, but if you are in no rush to sell for whatever your personal circumstances are then it doesn't seem as though there is any shortage of people wanting to pay rent either for the house opposite me or for student digs in Durham / up and down the land with Foxtons. I'd agree there are far easier and safer ways to earn money on a large sum - bonds, shares, savings accounts etc, but I suppose the article sums up the problem with large numbers of BTL'ers getting out of the game. You've got high prices and (relatively) expensive mortgages and a diminishing number of homes for rent. Those wishing to enter the market therefore cannot afford to buy and are finding it increasingly hard to pay the rent and that is if they can get their foot in the door in the first place.

I think this is in essence what the house opposite me is doing. They have put it on the market at about £150k over what I paid for my near identical property a few years ago and it hasn't as yet sold. It is overpriced by about 50k based on recent sales. Last weekend some people moved in and I suspect that they are just renting it out whilst they do some refurbishments (skip out front now). I guess the risk is that you find a buyer and your tenants decline to move out / stop paying the rent, but for the time being they seem quite happy to just have them there (presumably) paying rent and council tax etc.

So the definition of crashy crashy that you have finally landed on is an 8% fall and then stagnation? Really vindicates sitting it out for the past decade hey…

Students queuing to get the chance to rent a flat, Foxtons lettings revenue up 18% in the three months to September. Another case of reality and this forum clashing? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11360193/Foxtons-announce-income-boost-lettings-amid-huge-UK-wide-spike-demand-rental-homes.html

NHS is ringfenced so can’t see your logic.

Forgot to add to this one. I think we’ll see a gradual reduction in year on year increases with Q2 /Q3 2023 being about where things go flatish. Might be slightly up year on year maybe slightly down; +\- 2% sort of thing. Into 2024, my punt in the dark is that things will have normalised, and although rates won’t be coming back down to 0.1% again anytime soon / ever, there is enough demand / money in people’s pockets to continue to support housing. I believe that 2024 will see prices head upward, though not at anywhere near the rate they have been. If there are to be steep falls, I think it is going to be very region / property type specific. London help to buy flats I could easily see going off a bit of a cliff, as will any less desirable property in the region / SE. Good family type homes in good areas will carry on as before as there is still plenty of money competing for them. Things that will upset this are if inflation remains high (I don’t think it will), if the war in Ukraine escalates to nukes / other countries / NATO join in and WW3 kicks off, or if the recession that is starting now heavily impacts the job market. There are certainly a lot of what ifs at present, and this is certainly the least sure I’ve felt about the possible direction of property.

Milestone birthday for the other half so we’re going to celebrate. For what it’s worth, things will slow, year on year might turn negative for a bit next year, but I don’t see a crash no. Nobody seems to be able to define what a crash is anyway on here - what would you define it as? I think a while back I went for 30% or more over the space of 12 months and so I don’t see that happening.

My plans - usual Xmas with a trip to the Caribbean after to get us through the worst of January, carry on ticking off the mortgage payments through the coming years, live life.